El Cajon flight school guilty in visa fraud

Company forfeits $250,000 in plea deal

FEDERAL COURT  A flight school and its former owners pleaded guilty to visa fraud and hiring illegal workers as instructors, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Andrew Burr of Henderson, Nev., and Christopher Watson of San Diego each pleaded guilty Thursday to misdemeanor charges of hiring illegal workers.

The flight school they used to own, Anglo American Aviation at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, was also charged and pleaded guilty to felony counts of creating false visa documents and making false statements to obtain them.

The case resonates in San Diego, where two of the 9/11 hijackers lived for a time and took flight training.

Watson and Burr were each sentenced to five years’ probation by U.S. Magistrate Judge Anthony Battaglia. The sentence also bans them from working in any flight school or any educational institutions that serves foreign students. The plea agreement also calls for the company to forfeit $250,000.

The felony charges focus on August to October 2007, said Mike Carney, acting special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. At that time, the flight school no longer had Federal Aviation Administration certification to provide a certain type of flight training for students wishing to be commercial pilots.

That certification allows flight schools to issue an I-20 form to foreign students wanting to enroll, Carney said. To do so, they access the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, a government program known as SEVIS that was set up after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to track visitors using student visas.

Foreign students then use that form to obtain a visa from the State Department, he said.

Jeremy Warren, the lawyer for Burr and Watson and the school, said the owners had allowed the accreditation to lapse. Nonetheless, for the next several months, Carney said, the school made false statements through SEVIS to get I-20 forms issued for 103 students.

Carney said that the 53 students able to enter the country were tracked down and that none was found to be a national security threat.

Carney said it was still a serious matter. “By violating the law, they opened up the possibility for people who don’t have the U.S.’s best interests at heart to enter the country and receive flight training,” he said.

ICE agents also determined that between 2001 and 2008, the company illegally hired 11 former students as instructors.